Chapter IX: On Board Our Flagships at Trafalgar:—captain Hardy and (2)

The _Dreadnought_ of Boscawen and Maurice Suckling ended her days at perhaps England’s darkest hour of national trial—at the time of the American War. She was doing harbour duty at Portsmouth at the time, as a guard and receiving ship.

At no period, perhaps in all our history did the future and the prospects of the British Empire seem so absolutely hopeless. We were fighting for existence against France and Spain, the two chief maritime Powers of Europe; and at the same time the vitality of the nation was being sapped by the never-ceasing struggle with the American colonists, now in its seventh year. Holland had added herself to our foes; Russia and the Baltic Powers were banded together in a league of “armed neutrality,” and stood by sullen and menacing. That, however, was not the worst. The price of naval impotence had to be paid. Great Britain was no longer mistress of the sea. She had lost command of the sea, and was drinking the bitter cup of consequent humiliation to the dregs.

_“Edinburgh.”_ _“Augusta.”_ _“Dreadnought.”_

_Painted by Swaine. Engraved and Published in 1760._]

It was the direct outcome of party politics and short sighted naval retrenchments in time of peace, pandering to the clamour of ministerial supporters in the House of Commons. The printed Debates and Journals of the House between 1773 and 1781 are extant, as are also the summaries of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, for those who care to learn what passed.

Out-matched and out-classed at every point, the British fleet found itself held in check all the world over. Colony after colony was wrested from us, or had to be let go, while our squadrons in distant seas had not strength enough to do better than fight drawn battles.[2] Gibraltar, closely beset by sea and land, was still holding out, but no man dared prophesy what news of the great fortress might not arrive next. Minorca, England’s other Mediterranean possession, had to surrender. The enemy were masters of the island, after driving the garrison into their last defences at St. Philip’s Castle. Nearer home, Ireland, in the enjoyment of Home Rule, was using the hour of Great Britain’s difficulty as her opportunity for demanding practical independence, with eighty thousand Irish volunteers under arms to back up the threats of the Dublin Parliament.

The Channel Fleet, though reinforced with every ship it was possible to find crews for, held the Channel practically on sufferance. Once it had to retreat before the enemy and seek refuge at Spithead. On another occasion the enemy were on the point of attacking it in Torbay with such preponderance of force that overwhelming disaster must have befallen it. Fortunately for England the French and Spanish admirals disagreed at the last moment and turned back.

Hanging in a frame on the walls of the Musée de Marine at the Louvre the English visitor to Paris to-day may see a draft original “State,” giving the official details of the divisions and brigades and the ships to escort them, of one of the French armies which was to be thrown across into England. It was no empty menace, and for three years the beacons along our south and east coasts had to be watched nightly; while camps of soldiers, horse and foot and artillery—the few regulars that had not been sent off to America—with all the militia regiments in the kingdom, extended all the way round, at points, from Caithness to Cornwall. To safeguard London there were camps of from eight to ten battalions each, mostly militia, at Coxheath, near Maidstone, at Dartford, at Warley, at Danbury in Essex, and at Tiptree Heath. To secure the colliery shipping of the Tyne two militia battalions were under canvas near Gateshead. A camp at Dunbar and Haddington watched over Edinburgh. The West Country was guarded by a big camp of fifteen militia battalions at Roborough, near Plymouth, with an outlying camp on Buckland Down, near Tavistock. To prevent the enemy making use of Torbay, Berry Head was fortified, the ruins of the old Roman camp of Vespasian’s legionaries there being utilized to build two twenty-four pounder batteries overlooking the passage into the bay. Every town almost throughout England had its “Armed Association” or “Fencibles,” volunteers, the men of which, by special permission from the Archbishop of Canterbury, drilled after church time every Sunday.

The effect on the oversea commerce of the country, penalized by excessive insurance rates, was calamitous. From 25 to 30 per cent premium was paid at Lloyds on cargoes from Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow to New York (still in British hands); and 20 per cent to the West Indies. As to the reality of the risk. On one occasion the enemy captured an Indiaman fleet bodily off Madeira, only eight vessels out of sixty-three escaping, with a loss to Great Britain of a million and a half sterling, including £300,000 in specie. We have, indeed, at this moment a daily reminder of the disaster. One of the unfortunate underwriters was a Mr. John Walter. His whole fortune swept away, he took to journalism, and the _Times_ newspaper was the result. Home waters were hardly more secure. Rather than pay the excessive extra premium demanded for the voyage up Channel, London merchants had their goods unladen at Bristol, and carried in light flat-bottomed craft called “runners,” built specially for the traffic, up the Severn to Gloucester, thence to be carted across to Lechlade for conveyance to their destination by barge down the Thames. At the same time the North Sea packets from Edinburgh (Grangemouth) to London refused all passengers who would not undertake to assist in the defence of the vessel in emergency. Printed notices were pasted up at the wharves announcing that no Quakers would be carried.

To such a pass had the loss of her supremacy at sea reduced Great Britain in the closing year of our fourth _Dreadnought’s_ career.

Our fifth _Dreadnought_ fought at Trafalgar. She was a 98-gun ship, one of the same set as the famous “fighting” _Téméraire_. The newspapers of the day made a good deal of her launch, which took place at Portsmouth Dockyard, on Saturday, the 13th of June, 1801. Here is an extract from one account:—

“At about twelve o’clock this fine ship, which has been thirteen years upon the stocks, was launched from the dockyard with all the naval splendour that could possibly be given to aid the grandeur and interest of the spectacle. She was decorated with an Ensign, Jack, Union, and the Imperial Standard, and had the marine band playing the distinguished martial pieces of ‘God save the King,’ ‘Rule Britannia,’ etc. etc. A prodigious concourse of persons, to the amount, as is supposed, of at least 10,000, assembled, and were highly delighted by the magnificence of the ship and the beautiful manner in which she entered the watery element. But what afforded great satisfaction was, that, in the passage of this immense fabric from the stocks, not a single accident happened. She was christened by Commissioner Sir Charles Saxton, who, as usual, broke a bottle of wine over her stem. Her complement of guns is to be 98, and she has the following significant emblem at her head; viz.—a lion couchant on a scroll containing the imperial arms as emblazoned on the Standard. This is remarkably well timed and adapted to her as being the first man-of-war launched since the Union of the British Isles.”

_Thomas Rowlandson. 1786._]

_James Gillray. Oct. 15, 1779._]

For twelve months before Trafalgar, the _Dreadnought_ was Collingwood’s flagship in the Channel Fleet. Collingwood passed most of the time cruising on blockade duty in the Bay of Biscay, where he used to spend his nights pacing on deck to and fro restlessly, expecting the enemy at any moment, and snatching intervals of sleep lying down on a gun-carriage on the quarter-deck. Collingwood only changed from her into the bigger _Royal Sovereign_ ten days before the battle. Under the eye of the former captain of our first _Excellent_ man-of-war, the _Dreadnought’s_ men had been trained to fire three broadsides in one minute and a half—a gunnery record for that day.

At Trafalgar the _Dreadnought_ fought as one of the ships in Collingwood’s line, and did the best with what opportunity came her way.

“This quiet old _Dreadnought_” wrote Dickens of his visit to the ship in her last years, “whose fighting days are all over—_sans_ guns, _sans_ shot, _sans_ shells, _sans_ everything—did fight at Trafalgar under Captain Conn—did figure as one of the hindmost ships in the column which Collingwood led—went into action about two in the afternoon, and captured the _San Juan_ in fifteen minutes.”

While fighting the _San Juan_—the _San Juan Nepomuceno_, a Spanish seventy-four—the _Dreadnought_ had to keep off two other Spaniards and a Frenchman at the same time; Admiral Gravina’s flagship, the _Principe de Asturias_, of 112 guns, and the _San Justo_ and _Indomptable_, two seventy-fours. The _San Juan_ in the end proved an easy prize, for she had been already severely mauled by some of Collingwood’s leading ships. On being run alongside of she gave in quickly. Without staying to take possession, the _Dreadnought_ pushed on to close with the big _Principe de Asturias_, and gave her several broadsides, one shot from which mortally wounded Admiral Gravina. The Spanish three-decker, however, managed to disengage, and made off, to lead the escaping ships in their flight for Cadiz. Thus the _Dreadnought_ was baulked of her big prize.

It was the Trafalgar _Dreadnought_ that gave the name to that great international institution, the _Dreadnought_ Seamen’s Hospital, at Greenwich. This, of course, was long after Trafalgar, for the “wooden whopper of the Thames,” as Dickens called the old three-decker in her old age, did not make her appearance off Greenwich until a quarter of a century later. The fine old veteran of “Eighteen Hundred and War Time,” lasted until 1857, and to the end they preserved on board as the special relic of interest, “a piece of glass from a cabin skylight scrawled over, with somebody’s diamond ring, with the names of those officers who were in her at Trafalgar.” Another old three-decker replaced the Trafalgar ship until 1870, when the institution was removed on shore. At Chatham to-day, in the dockyard museum, visitors may see the _Dreadnought’s_ bell which was on board the old ship during the battle, and was removed from her when the _Dreadnought_ was broken up. Yet another memento of the Trafalgar _Dreadnought_ exists in the Eton eight-oar _Dreadnought_, one of the “Lower Boats,” and so-called originally, together with the boat that bears the name _Victory_, in honour of Nelson and Trafalgar.

Our sixth _Dreadnought_ is a still existing ironclad turret-ship, mounting four 38-ton muzzle loaders, launched in 1875. She is a ship of 10,820 tons, and cost to complete for sea £619,739. She served for ten years—from 1884 to 1894—in the Mediterranean, and after that as a coast-guard ship in Bantry Bay. Paid off finally in 1905, the _Dreadnought_ now lies at her last moorings in the Kyles of Bute, awaiting the final day of all for her naval career, and the auctioneer’s hammer.

To conclude with a flying glance at our mighty battleship, the _Dreadnought_ of to-day, the seventh bearer of the name until now, and as all the world knows by far the most powerful man-of-war that has ever sailed the seas. She is the biggest and the heaviest and the fastest and the hardest-hitting vessel that any navy as yet has seen afloat. And more than that. The _Dreadnought_ has been so built as to be practically unsinkable by mine or torpedo; while at the same time her tremendous battery of ten 12-in. guns—huge cannon, each forty-five feet long—makes her absolutely irresistible in battle against all comers; a match for any two—probably any three—of the biggest battleships in foreign navies afloat at the present hour.

These are some of the “points”—some of the leading features—of this grim _mastodonte de mer_ of ours, His Majesty’s battleship, the _Dreadnought_. With her coal, ammunition, and sea stores on board, the _Dreadnought_ weighs—or displaces in equivalent bulk of sea water, according to the present-day method of reckoning the size of men-of-war—17,800 tons.

Put the _Dreadnought_ bodily inside St. Paul’s and she would fill the whole nave and chancel of the Cathedral from reredos to the Western doors. Her length would take up the whole of one side of Trafalgar Square. Her width would exactly fill Northumberland Avenue, leaving only some half-dozen inches between the house fronts on either side and the outside of the hull. Two _Victorys_ and a frigate of Nelson’s day, fully manned and rigged, could be packed away within the _Dreadnought’s_ hull.

[3]]

Measured from end to end, from bows to stern, the ship’s hull extends 490 feet. From forecastle to keel, measuring vertically, is a matter of some 60 feet down, equivalent to about the normal height of a church tower.

What, however, above everything else, specially distinguishes the _Dreadnought_ from all other warships afloat, is her terrific battery. Hitherto four 12-inch guns have formed the standard main armament for all battleships. The _Dreadnought_ carries ten 12-inch guns of a new and more powerful type than any heretofore in existence. They are mounted in pairs in “redoubts,” armoured with Krupp steel eleven inches thick, and are so grouped on board that when fighting broadside-on with an enemy, eight of the ten guns will bear on the enemy and be in action throughout. In chase, or fighting end-on, six of the guns are available at all times. The firing charge per gun of “modified” cordite weighs by itself 2 cwt.—the weight of a sack of coals on a street coal-cart. In the hour of battle each discharge from the _Dreadnought’s_ broadside will hurl into the enemy three tons of “metal”—bursting shells—each shell being from three to four feet long, and weighing singly 7½ cwt. With each shot also, bang goes £80, the cost of the cartridge and its projectile. Twelve thousand yards will be the _Dreadnought’s_ chosen range for engaging—six miles—about as far as clear vision is possible above the horizon.

]

]

“Mark X” is the official style for the _Dreadnought_ class of 12-inch gun. It is the most powerful piece of ordnance in the world. It weighs upwards of fifty-eight tons, about the weight of a larger “tank” railway engine of the kind that brings the suburban bread-winner up to London every morning. Its muzzle velocity—the speed at which the shot flashes forth from the gun—is 2900 feet (966⅔ yards, or well over half a mile) in a second. The force with which the shot starts off is enough to send it through a solid slab of wrought iron set close up in front of the muzzle of the gun 4¼ feet thick. When fired with full charges, each gun develops a force able to lift the _Dreadnought_ herself bodily nearly a yard up, exerting a force equivalent to 47,697 “foot-tons,” in gunnery language. The entire broadside of eight 12-inch guns, fired simultaneously, as at the gun trial off the Isle of Wight, develops a force sufficient to heave the huge vessel herself, 21 feet up—nearly out of the water, in fact.

]

As an instance of the tremendous range of the _Dreadnought’s_ guns: mounted on one of the Dover forts, they could easily drop shells on the deck of a Channel packet in the act of leaving Calais harbour. Imagine one of them mounted in front of St. Paul’s and firing with full charges in any direction. Its shells would burst over Slough in one direction and over Gravesend in the other. Hertford, St. Albans, Chertsey, Sevenoaks, would all be within range. Twenty-five miles is the extreme estimated range of a shot fired with a full service charge, and the trajectory of the projectile would, at its culminating point, attain a height in the air of nearly six miles, twice the height of Mont Blanc.

They are “wire guns,” as the term goes, constructed in each case by winding coil on coil of steel ribbon or “tape” (a quarter of an inch wide and ·06 of an inch thick), round and round on an inner steel tube, the barrel of the piece; just as the string is wound round the handle of a cricket bat. The tape or “wire” is then covered by outer “jackets,” or tubes of steel. Upwards of 228,800 yards of wire—a length of 130 miles—weighing some 15 tons, are required for each of the _Dreadnought’s_ 12-inch guns, and it takes from three to four weeks to wind on the wire. The rifling of the barrel comprises forty-eight grooves, varying in depth from ·08 of an inch at the muzzle to ·1 at the breech. Each of the _Dreadnought’s_ guns, separately, employs in its manufacture from first to last upwards of five hundred men in various capacities, and costs, as turned out ready to send on board, but without sighting and other vital appliances, between £10,000 and £11,000.

The _Dreadnought_ carries eleven inches of Krupp steel armour on her sides, turrets, and conning tower, and rather thinner armour at the bows and stern. Her speed of twenty-one knots makes her a full two knots faster than any existing battleship. She is the first battleship in any navy to be propelled by the Parsons turbine, to which her speed is due. Lastly, the cost of the _Dreadnought_ is officially stated at £1,797,497.

Exceptional in themselves, and of exceptional historic interest as well, are the honours that have fallen to the _Dreadnought’s_ lot within the few months that our great naval masterpiece has been in existence.

At the outset the _Dreadnought_ had the good fortune to be named and sent afloat by His Majesty King Edward personally. That in itself was an exceptional honour, and one that has fallen to the lot of very few ships of the Royal Navy—to be named and sent afloat by the reigning sovereign. There have been just six instances in all, from the earliest times to the present day. Queen Victoria launched four men-of-war during her long reign; but no King of England ever launched a ship in the four hundred years between King Edward and Henry the Eighth: King Edward with the _Dreadnought_ and Henry the Eighth with the _Great Harry_ are the two historic instances. Many of our sovereigns, of course—practically all of them: Edward the Sixth, Queen Elizabeth, the Stuart kings, Cromwell also, George the Third, and William the Fourth—attended in state on various occasions to witness the launch of some notable man-of-war, but they were present only as spectators, and took no part in the actual proceedings. Charles the First was to have personally named the famous _Sovereign of the Seas_, with the same ceremonial used at the launch of our first _Dreadnought_, and rode down with his Court to Woolwich to do so; but they could not get the ship out of dock, and the King rode back to Whitehall disappointed, deputing the Lord High Admiral to name the ship when she did get clear—not till between eight and nine in the evening. Charles the Second, in like manner, was to have personally named our first _Britannia_, but His Majesty was taken ill on the day before. Again too, as it also happened, there was a hitch at the launch. The _Britannia_ stuck fast for twelve hours, and then went off at midnight to the flare of torches and cressets, after which a courier was hurried off at gallop to Whitehall, to acquaint the King, “lest certain base reports (i.e. that the _Britannia_ had fallen over in dock) may have reached your Majesty.”

Yet another exceptional honour that befel the _Dreadnought_ was after the great review of the Home Fleet off Cowes, on the first Monday of August this year, when King Edward, with Queen Alexandra, the Prince of Wales, and Prince Edward of Wales, with Sir John Fisher and members of the Royal suite, went out on board the _Dreadnought_ to beyond Spithead to witness target-practice with the _Dreadnought’s_ turret-guns; the memorable occasion on which, at 2640 yards’ range, the four 12-in. guns that fired, scored within two and a half minutes nine bull’s-eyes and two “outers” out of twelve rounds discharged. Never to be forgotten was the scene as the _Dreadnought_ passed down the double lines of the Home Fleet in the brilliant sunshine; the ships all dressed with flags, and with decks manned, and cheering, and firing salutes—the giant ship herself flying the Royal Standard at the masthead and at either yard-arm the Union Flag, symbol of His Majesty’s rank as Admiral of the Fleet, and the Admiralty Anchor Flag, a combination not seen on board a British man-of-war of the fighting-line, even in those historic waters, for over a century—not, indeed, since that summer’s morning of 1794, when the three flags flew together at the mastheads of the famous _Queen Charlotte_, denoting King George the Third’s presence on board, with his Queen, on his visit to present a diamond-hilted sword of honour to Lord Howe, then just arrived with the prizes taken on the Glorious First of June. That also was the last occasion, until the other day, on which a King and Queen of England were together on board a British man-of-war at sea.

The guns fired before the King and Queen were those in the two after-turrets, and the targets used were the usual service ones, 16 ft. by 20 ft., with a central bull’s-eye 14 ft. square. The range was about a mile and a half, and six rounds were fired from each turret. Of the three shots placed outside the bull’s-eye, two went through the target, whilst the third, which missed, cut away the rope fastening the canvas of the target to the framework. Two of the shots in the bull’s-eye went through the very centre, through a small circle, about thirty inches in diameter, marked in the middle of the target.

We will conclude this outline of our _Dreadnoughts’_ story with a brief tabular statement of certain points in detail of comparison and contrast between the _Dreadnought_ of to-day and the historic _Victory_.

THE _DREADNOUGHT_ AND _VICTORY_ COMPARED

_DREADNOUGHT._ _VICTORY._
Time Building 16 months Five years
ten months
Total Cost £1,797,497 £89,000
Displacement 17,900 tons 3400 tons.
Total Weight Broadside 6800 lb. 1160 lb.
Extreme Range of Guns 25 miles 3 miles.
Penetration of armour at six miles 9 in. Krupp Steel
Penetration at all distances Nil.
Heaviest Gun 12 inch 6 inch.
Weight of Charge 265 lb. 10½ lb.
(M.D. cordite). (gunpowder).
Time to make Gun 12 to 15 months Four guns a week.
Cost per Gun £11,000 £57. 15s.
Average Weight per Gun 58 tons 56 cwt.
Complement 780 men 850 men.
Length 490 ft. 226 ft. 6 in.
Breadth 82 ft. 52 ft.
Mean Load Draught 26 ft. 6 in. 25 ft.
Number of Guns 37 104
Speed 21½ knots 10 knots.

II

“KENT CLAIMS THE FIRST BLOW!”

“The Kentishe Menne in Front!”

“Kent claims for itself the first blow in battle against alien enemies.” The hand that penned these words has lain in the grave for over seven centuries; but old William Fitz-Stephen of Canterbury knew what he meant, and meant what he wrote. They are words that our fine “county cruiser” the _Kent_ of to-day—to which the ladies of Kent have presented a silken battle flag and the Men of Kent a silver shield and other gifts, to incite the _Kent’s_ bluejackets to shoot straight—might well adopt and make the ship’s motto. It was from the County of Kent that the initiative came in the movement which has had such excellent results in inducing the county people in other counties all over Great Britain and Ireland to display a practical interest in the warships that bear the county names; and the idea has since spread in other cases throughout the Empire.

The county “Association of Men of Kent and Kentish Men” of their own accord took the initial step in the spring of 1899 by approaching the late Lord Goschen, then First Lord of the Admiralty, with a request that one of four cruisers of a new type, to be built under the supplemental programme of the previous August, might be named after the County of Kent. The request was heartily received, and in response the name _Kent_ was announced for the first of the new ships. A little later the Men of Kent made a second proposal. They asked permission to establish among themselves a “county memorial for the new county-cruiser _Kent_,” expressing their “desire and intention to do something to keep up a continual connection between the county and the good ship, and to cause a sustained interest to be taken in her fortunes and the welfare of those on board.” Lord Goschen acceded to that request, and a county subscription was immediately set on foot by Lord Harris, the president of the Association for the year, to form a Kent county trophy fund for the cruiser _Kent_. It was proposed to present the ship, on commissioning, with a challenge trophy in silver, to be competed for annually among the gun crews of the ship, the champion gun team for each year to have their names inscribed on the trophy and receive a special monetary reward from a county fund established with the trophy. The trophy itself was to be kept on board and to be displayed on special and festive occasions in the mess of the winning team. Whenever the _Kent_ was out of commission the trophy would be cared for by the Captain of the Royal Naval Barracks, Chatham, or at Greenwich Naval College.[4] The movement received cordial support from Lord Selborne, Lord Goschen’s successor at the Admiralty, and from the late Earl Stanhope, the then Lord Lieutenant of Kent, and the late Lord Salisbury, then Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. More than that, indeed. Interested by the patriotic action taken by the County of Kent on behalf of its cruiser namesake, His Majesty the King was himself graciously pleased to command that in the cases of future ships bearing the names of counties the Lords Lieutenant of the counties concerned were to be requested by the Admiralty to nominate in each case some lady connected with the county to perform the naming and launching ceremony.

_From a photograph kindly lent by the Designers and Manufacturers of the Trophy, Messrs. George Kenning & Son, Goldsmiths, Little Britain and Aldersgate Street, London._]

The trophy-shield subscribed for by the Men of Kent, together with an album for the names and scores of its winners from time to time, was formally handed over to the captain and ship’s company of the _Kent_ at Sheerness by representatives of the County Association, the gift being received with every mark of regard and genuine welcome. Following on that, a deputation of county ladies, headed by the Countess Stanhope, the wife of the Lord Lieutenant, presented the favoured ship with two flags, a beautiful silken ensign and a silken Union Jack, subscribed for by the County Association of “Maids of Kent and Kentish Maids.” The flags were brought on board in the beautiful box of Kentish Heart of Oak in which they are now kept under the sentry before the captain’s cabin. The ensign was bent on the halyards and ceremoniously hoisted to the peak by Countess Stanhope in the presence of the assembled officers and crew of the _Kent_, and the Jack was hoisted by the Hon. Secretary of the Ladies’ Committee, Mrs. Bills, the proceedings winding up with a luncheon to the ladies on the after-deck by Captain Gamble and his officers, and an afternoon dance on board.

* * * * *

That the name of the ancient maritime county of England should be borne in the fleet to-day by a modern British warship is in itself a matter of historic interest. There are, indeed, very excellent reasons why the County of Kent should receive distinguished treatment from the Admiralty, why its name deserves to be honourably commemorated in the British fleet of to-day.

Kent has a place of its own in regard to the naval annals of England, old-time associations with the oversea defence of England and the national navy, that stand quite by themselves. The associations indeed go back across fifteen centuries, to the earliest days of our “rough island story”; so far back, indeed, as the old old times of the “Counts of the Saxon Shore.”

Dover and Reculver, the two principal Kentish ports of the days when Britain was a Roman province, were central stations in the widespread line of outposts along the coast whence watch and ward were kept for the coming of the Norseland raiders oversea in the springtime year by year.

Bared to the sun and soft, warm air,
Streams back the Norseman’s yellow hair,
I see the gleam of axe and spear,
The sound of smitten shields I hear,
Keeping a harsh, barbaric time
To Saga’s chant and Runic rhyme.

From the pharos on the Foreland in those strenuous times of long ago keen-sighted men of Kent kept look-out daily, scanning the horizon from sunrise to sunset; ever on the alert to start the alarm and pass it on to where the Roman coast defence galleys lay at their moorings off the mouth of the Wantsum Channel by Richborough Castle.

Alike on land and sea theirs was the post of honour. At Hastings, led by the stout Earl Leofwine, as we know—

A standard made of sylke and jewells rare
Was borne near Harold at the Kenters Head.

And centuries after that, whenever the King of England was in the field, they claimed the right to lead the van—“The Kentishe Menne in front!”

The Kentish contingent—the “Eastern Ports” contingent—formed the bulk and the backbone of the Cinque Ports fleets of the Middle Ages, both in ships and men. Four of the five “Head Ports” in the famous confederation were Kentish ports—Sandwich, Dover, Romney, and Hythe. The “Eastern Ports” counted twenty-one limbs, “Members”; the “Western Ports”—Hastings with the two “Ancient Towns” attached—ten “Members.” The old Cinque Ports Navy, in these times of ours it may be, is little more than a name, a faded memory of a dim and distant past, a perished institution of a dead old time; yet it was once an actual fact, a living hot-blooded reality, the chief guarantee of our national existence, a very real bulwark, the foremost defence of England from foreign invasion. “The courage of those sailors who manned the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England terrible on the seas.” For all that we have to thank, in the first place, the Men of Kent, that Kent of which old twelfth-century Fitz-Stephen, monk of Canterbury and historian of his own times, was thinking when he wrote, “Kent claims for itself the first blow in battle against alien enemies.”

The Kentish ships of the Cinque Ports, “Ships of Kent” they are explicitly called, took a leading part with the Crusaders’ fleet which on its way to the Holy Land for the Second Crusade, in the year 1147, captured Lisbon from the Moors. Kentish men fought with that fine leader, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, “Warden of the Cinque,” when he fell on the French King’s fleet at Damme—just three years before King John put his mark to Magna Charta.

It was a squadron of the Kentish ships of the Ports’ federation that, in the year after Magna Charta, under one of England’s finest heroes and greatest men, that grand fellow, stout-hearted Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, Chief Justiciar of England and Constable of Dover Castle, Cœur de Lion’s favourite pupil in arms, saved England from invasion by rounding up the fleet with which the renegade leader Eustace the Monk—“pirata nequissimus” one old chronicler calls him—was making for the Thames, and dealing the French the first of the series of knock-down blows of which Nelson struck the last at Trafalgar. The story of the “Battle of Bartholomew’s Day,” the 24th of August, 1217, is one we ought not willingly to let die. There is hardly a finer tale in all our history than that which tells how De Burgh’s sixteen Cinque Port warships from Dover, with nineteen or twenty small craft, stood out to meet the Monk’s hundred and odd ships—eighty of them the largest vessels of the time—off the North Foreland; swept round them astern, weathered them and closed, grappled them fast, under cover of a stinging fire of archery and crossbow bolts, cut down their sails, and then, flinging up in the air handfuls of quicklime to blow into the faces of the Frenchmen, boarded and overpowered the enemy in hand-to-hand fight with falchion and pike and battle-axe. They fought it out from early morning until the afternoon was spent, when fifty-five ships of the Monk’s fleet had been taken, and the rest, except fifteen ships that ran away, all sent to the bottom.

Again, in the tremendous Midsummer Day’s battle in the harbour of Sluys, the “Trafalgar of the Middle Ages,” although to most people the event is barely a schoolbook memory—the great naval victory that made Creçy possible—once more the Ship-and-Lion flag at the masthead of vessels from the four Kent ports was to the fore, well up in the van of King Edward’s attacking fleet and in the thickest of the fighting. And at the battle of “Espagnols-sur-Mer,” off Winchelsea, where again Edward the Third fought in person, together with the Black Prince; off St. Mahé; and at Harfleur, covering Henry the Fifth’s landing for the march that ended at Agincourt, and in many another hard-fought action in the Narrow Seas after that, Kentish men in the Kentish ships of the Ports’ Navy full well played their part.

It was oak from the Weald of Kent for the most part that built the men-of-war of Queen Elizabeth’s fleet which drove the Spanish Armada through the Channel and North Sea to its doom on the reefs of Stornaway and the quicksands of Connemara—ships timbered and planked with oak from the Kentish Weald, and shaped and framed and clamped together in the Kentish Dockyards of Deptford and Woolwich. Phineas Pett, a Kentish man by birth, designed and built the famous _Sovereign of the Seas_; and his grandson, Sir Phineas Pett, designed and built our first _Britannia_. The _Great Harry_ was mostly built of Kentish oak; as was, at a later day, Sir Richard Grenville’s “little” _Revenge_, and, at a still later day, Nelson’s _Victory_, launched at Chatham.

* * * * *

It was a Man of Kent who, as admiral in chief command, planned and gave the order for the capture of Gibraltar. It was another Man of Kent who, as admiral second in command, carried that order out. Sir George Rooke, one of the Rookes of Monk’s Horton, Kent—by far the ablest sea-officer in the British service in the hundred years between Blake and Hawke—was the Commander-in-Chief before Gibraltar. Byng, Sir George Byng, was the second in command—the elder of the two Byngs known to naval history, “Mediterranean Byng,” as he was called in the Navy in connection with a later exploit of his, and remembered nowadays as the Byng who beat the enemy and was not shot. He became Lord Viscount Torrington, and may, in like manner, be distinguished from the other Lord Torrington of naval history (Arthur Herbert) as the Torrington who beat the enemy and was not court-martialled and broke.

A famous family of old-time Kent were the Byngs, seated at Wrotham ever since the fifteenth century, more than one member of which came to the front in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and the Stuart kings. Such as, for instance, the fine old Kentish cavalier of Browning’s rousing song:

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing,
And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
Marched them along,
Fifty score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!

Fifty score strong! Fifty score strong!
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!

Other Kentish men of note associated directly with the Old Navy were Sir Thomas Spert, founder of Trinity House, and captain of the _Harry Grace à Dieu_ when Henry the Eighth crossed the Straits of Dover in her to the Field of the Cloth of Gold; Sir William Hervey, of Kidbrooke, “who greatly distinguished himself in boarding one of the vessels composing the Spanish Armada,” and was raised to the peerage as Lord Hervey; old Captain Dick Fogg, of Repton, near Ashford, captain under Charles the First of the tenth whelp and the _Victory_ and of other men-of-war of note; Kit Fogg, his son, who fought for England in half a score of sea-fights under Charles the Second and down to the time of Queen Anne; Christopher Gunman, a bold fireship and frigate captain in the Dutch wars, captain of the Duke of York’s flagship at Solebay, who later on nearly drowned the future James the Second; George Legge, afterwards the Earl of Dartmouth, whose valour in battle at Solebay made his fortune, a member of a Kent county family of long descent; two notable Commodores, two St. Lo’s of Northfleet; Commodore Boys of the _Luxborough_ galley; Sir Piercey Brett, who as a lieutenant went round the world with Anson, and lived to be one of the most distinguished officers of his day; Sir Thomas Boulden Thompson, who fought under Nelson at Teneriffe, at the Nile, and at Copenhagen. These are a few names taken at random.

Sir Sidney Smith, the “Hero of Acre,” the man who made Bonaparte, as the Emperor himself put it, “miss his destiny,” was of Kentish birth and family, and learned his “three R’s” at Tunbridge School; and it was to Lord Barham, as First Lord of the Admiralty, that Nelson reported himself in September, 1805, when he volunteered to shorten his leave at home and go out at once to fight the enemy at Trafalgar.

It was Kent, too, that gave England Captain John Harvey—one of the Harveys of Eastrey, a family that for generations had sent its sons into the Navy—captain of the _Brunswick_ on Lord Howe’s famous day, the “Glorious First of June,” 1794, who fell mortally wounded in close action with the French _Vengeur_. When the two ships first collided, the master of the _Brunswick_ proposed to cut the _Vengeur_ clear. “No,” answered Captain Harvey; “we’ve got her, and we’ll keep her!” After he received his mortal wound he refused to let himself be carried off the quarter-deck. He dragged himself down to the cockpit, saying as he went off the deck, “Remember my last words: the colours of the _Brunswick_ must never be struck!” A brother, Henry Harvey, was the admiral whose name is still to be met with on old tavern signboards here and there in East Kent. Henry Harvey, captain of the _Ramillies_, came to his brother’s aid on the 1st of June, and with three terrific broadsides finished off the _Vengeur_ for the _Brunswick_, amid resounding cheers from the _Brunswick’s_ men, and giving occasion to an officer in another ship who was looking on to improvise on King David: “Behold how good and joyful a thing it is for brethren to fight together in unity!”

It was this same Henry Harvey who, as a rear-admiral, later in the Great War (in 1797), took Trinidad. That the conquest proved an easy business was not his fault. The Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish squadron at Trinidad, Admiral Apodoca, when he saw Admiral Harvey coming, without clearing for action or firing a shot set fire to his ships and escaped ashore. He took horse and galloped off, and presented himself, excited and panting with his exertions, before the Governor of the island, General Chacon. “I have burnt my ships, sir,” he burst in with, “in case they should fall into the power of the English.” “Burnt them?” exclaimed the astonished Governor; “destroyed them! Have you saved nothing?” “Oh, yes I have!” Apodoca replied. “Yes I have! I have! I have saved”—drawing a carved and painted wooden image, some fifteen inches long, from under his cloak as he spoke—“my flagship’s patron saint—I have saved San Juan de Compostella!” That Apodoca’s flagship was the _San Vincente_, and that there was no _San Juan de Compostella_ on the Spanish Navy List at the time, are details the story does not concern itself with.

* * * * *

Yet another interesting connection between Kent and the sea service of bygone times is this. H.M.S. _Kent’s_ name is not the only man-of-war name associated with the county that has figured in the fighting days of old. No fewer than eighteen other man-of-war names connected with the county of Kent have from time to time been borne on the roll of the British fleet. It was on board a _Canterbury_ that a notable naval officer of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, Captain George Walton, penned words which have been quoted over and over again as a masterpiece of conciseness. He had been in pursuit of a Spanish squadron, and on his return, as most of us have read, reported as follows:—

“_To Admiral Sir George Byng, Commander-in-Chief._

“Sir,

“We have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships and vessels
which were upon the coast, as per margin.

“I am, etc.,

“GEORGE WALTON.

“Canterbury, off Syracusa, _August 16, 1718_.

“One of 60 guns, one of 54, one of 40, one of 24—taken; one of
54, two of 40, one of 30 guns, with a fireship and two bomb
vessels—burnt.”

As a fact, unfortunately, Captain Walton’s “dispatch” was written in quite another way. The captain of the _Canterbury_ really sent the admiral a letter of two pages. What is passed off as his whole “dispatch,” is actually only the concluding sentence of the letter, excerpted and dressed up. An unscrupulous admiralty official, for the purposes of a book on the campaign, manipulated the letter and printed its last paragraph by itself as the entire despatch. Historians following one another have since then simply copied Secretary Corbett.

Our first _Sandwich_ broke the French line at the battle of La Hogue, and lost her gallant captain in doing it. Another bore Rodney’s flag in five battles—two with the Spaniards and three with the French—and was at the first relief of Gibraltar during the Great Siege. Our first _Dover_ was present at the taking of Jamaica. Another won fame as Captain Cloudesley Shovell’s ship. Commodore Trunnion served on board another _Dover_, if Smollett spoke by the card in making him express a wish to be buried “in the red jacket which I wore when I boarded the _Renummy_.” Apart from the taking of Louis the Fifteenth’s frigate _Renommée_, if we count in other French and Spanish frigates and privateers taken, our various _Dovers_, in their time, must have brought home captured flags enough to deck the town out from end to end. All, of course, have long since rotted out of existence. People in old times set little store by such trophies. “What are you going to do with all these flags?” a friend once asked of a frigate captain who, in his barge, gaily decorated from bows to stern with the colours of ships taken during the commission, was being pulled in from Spithead to land at the old Sally Port, Portsmouth. “Do with them?” came the reply. “Why, take ’em home and hang ’em on the trees round father’s garden.”

It was a _Chatham_ whose twenty-four pounders, one May morning, just a hundred and forty-eight years ago, gave the Royal Navy our first, and the original, “Saucy” _Arethusa_. One _Maidstone_ fought with Blake at Santa Cruz de Teneriffe. Another, acting as “guide of the fleet,” led Hawke to victory on that stormy November afternoon among the reefs of Quiberon Bay, which the French Navy, pillorying the memory of its unfortunate admiral, has ever since called “la journée de M. Conflans.”

A _Greenwich_ fought at La Hogue, and was one of Benbow’s squadron in his last fight. One _Deptford_ was also at La Hogue, and another with Byng off Minorca, where the _Deptford_, at any rate, did her duty. A _Romney_, in Queen Anne’s war, after a career of distinction, went down with all on board to westward of St. Agnes, Scilly, on the night of the catastrophe to Sir Cloudesley Shovell. _Rochester_, and _Medway_, and _Sheerness_, are also man-of-war names that have attaching to them interesting memories of the fighting days of old, as have too, in one way or other, in differing degrees, the remaining names of the group, _Woolwich_ and _Faversham_, _Eltham_ and _Deal Castle_, _Margate_, _Queenborough_, and _Folkestone_.

* * * * *

Our modern-day cruiser the _Kent_ has her own story also as a man-of-war, a notable and interesting historic reputation of her own, to uphold. This summary will give its points, the “battle honours” which the _Kent_ would be entitled to bear on her ship’s flag were our ships authorized to follow the practice of the army in regard to regimental flags.

H.M.S. _KENT_.

Blake’s victory over Tromp off Portland Feb., 1653
Blake and Monk’s victory off Lowestoft June, 1653
Monk’s victory over Tromp off Camperdown July, 1653
Blake’s bombardment of Tunis April, 1655
Duke of York’s victory off the North Foreland June, 1665
Rupert and Albemarle—“The Four Days’ Fight” June, 1666
Rupert and Albemarle—“The St. James’s Day Fight” July, 1666
Battle off Cape Barfleur and Attack at La Hogue May, 1692
Rooke’s battle in Vigo Bay Oct., 1702
Capture of a French convoy off Granville July, 1703
Battle of Malaga[5] Aug., 1704
Siege of Barcelona Sept., 1705
Action with Duguay Trouin April, 1709
Capture of the French 60-gun ship _Superbe_ July, 1710
Sir George Byng’s victory off Messina July, 1718
Relief of Gibraltar Feb., 1727
Capture of the Spanish 74-gun ship _Princessa_ April, 1740
Hawke’s victory off Finisterre Oct., 1747
Taking of Geriah Feb., 1756
Recapture of Calcutta and bombardment of Chandernagore Feb., 1757
Alexandria Mar., 1801
Service with Nelson off Toulon 1803-4
In the Mediterranean 1807-12

A peculiarly interesting memento of the _Kent_ in connection with one of these battles is in existence. It refers to the part played by the _Kent_ of Charles the Second’s navy just before the battle of June, 1666, “The Four Days’ Fight,” in which Monk, Duke of Albemarle, during Prince Rupert’s temporary absence with a third of the fleet in the Channel, without waiting for Rupert to rejoin, rashly flung his weaker force on De Ruyter with the whole of the Dutch fleet at hand and brought about a general engagement.

The _Kent_ had been sent off on the 27th of May on a scouting cruise between “Blackness” (the old name for Cape Grisnez) and Ostend. Late in the evening of the 30th of May the following letter was handed to the Duke of Albemarle from the captain of the _Kent_, sent across by a Dutch ketch that the _Kent_ had taken:—

“May it please yr Grace,

“This morning being off Gravelines in chase of a small ship and
a ketch belonging to Newport, as they pretend, whom I have sent
into the Downs to your Grace, I mett with a Swede who came from
Amsterdam on Sunday last in his ballast, bound for Bordeaux,
who relates that 75 sayle of the Flemish Fleet sett sayle
out of the Texel the 21st present, and 28 more from Zealand,
leaving 6 ships behind them, whose men they tooke out to man
the rest of the Fleet, & stoode away to the Northwest, which as
my duty binds me I have thought fit to acquaint yr Grace with:
& humbly kissing your hands I remain

“Yr Grace’s most humble servant to be commanded,

“THOS. EWENS.

“From aboard his Matⁱᵉˢ shipp _Kent_: this 30th May, 1666.”

The captain of the _Kent’s_ letter was considered so important that Albemarle at once sent it off by express to the Admiralty. It is still in existence; a stained sheet of yellowish paper with the writing crabbed and not easily decipherable, and brown with age and faded. The letter, with Albemarle’s covering note, was found many years afterwards among some correspondence that had belonged to King James the Second, just as the letter had been filed on its receipt at the Admiralty in 1666, when James, Duke of York, was Lord High Admiral. It is endorsed:—

“For his Grace the Duke of Albemarle, aboard the _Royall Charles_ this ⸺ d.dd. In the Downes.”

Albemarle’s covering letter to the Admiralty bears the curiously scrawled endorsements of the various postmasters on the Dover Road as they passed the courier along on his hurried journey up to London:—“Received ye packett at Canterbury, att past 5 in ye Morneing, by Mee, Edw Wheiston”; “Sittingborne, past 8 in ye morning, by mee Wm Webb”; “Rochester, past ten Before noon, Wm Brooker”; “Gravesend at nowne, Hen White.”

Albemarle was roughly handled and had to beat a retreat for the mouth of the Thames—fighting a rear-guard action, skilfully conducted and gallantly contested. Rupert joined him just in time to avert disaster, but one of the English flagships, the _Prince_, grounded at the last moment on the Galloper Shoal, and was taken by the Dutch and burned as she lay. This was just as the _Kent_ rejoined the flag, in time for the last day’s battle.

Cromwell, it is curious to note, first gave the name Kent to the navy for a man-of-war; one November day of the year 1652. On that day—Saturday, the 6th of November—an application from the Admiralty Committee as to the names for four frigates, two of which were to be launched in the following week, was laid before the Lord General Cromwell and the Commonwealth Council of State. The reply was that the following would be the names: _Kentish_, _Essex_, _Hampshire_, and _Sussex_. So a State Paper, now among the national archives in the Record Office, explicitly states. In their selection the Council made thereby a new departure, and introduced a set of man-of-war names entirely different from any before known at sea. The little group of four ships named in November, 1652, leads the way at the head of the long series of British men-of-war which have borne the names of our counties in battle on the sea with distinction on so many historic days.

Why the form “Kentish” was preferred to “Kent” for the first of the four ships, is a matter that is not quite obvious. The name, of course, may have been appointed for no particular reason. The four names chosen were names of four seaboard counties, locally interested in maritime affairs, and it may well have been thought that to call one of the ships the “Kentish” was much the same thing as calling her the “Kent.” On the other hand, there may have been in addition something behind, in regard to the name appointed. Everybody knows, _teste_ Lord Macaulay, why the Puritan authorities put down bull-baiting; not because it hurt the bull, but because it pleased the people. The Puritans rather liked, it is to be feared, making themselves deliberately offensive to those who saw otherwise to them. It is certainly curious, if not significant, that at the Restoration the name “Kentish” disappears forthwith from off the official Navy List, and “Kent” appears instead. This was just at the time, too, that certain distinctly obnoxious names, bestowed on men-of-war by the Puritan authorities, as, for instance, _Naseby_, _Marston Moor_, _Worcester_, _Torrington_, _Newbury_, _Dunbar_, _Tredagh_ (the vernacular for _Drogheda_), were replaced by names such as _Royal Charles_, _York_, _Dunkirk_, _Dreadnought_, _Revenge_, _Henry_, and _Resolution_.

Was any reference intended in the form “Kentish,” as originally appointed for the new ship of 1652, to the “Kentish Rising” of 1648, and its hard fate under the sword blades of Fairfax’s troopers? Was the name designed as a reminder to the Royalists of South-Eastern England? Was it meant as a memento of the penalty that had been paid by so many who, only four years before, had buckled on sword and ridden forth so blithely to the county marching song:—

Kentish men, keep your King,
Long swords and brave hearts bring,
Down with the rebels, and slit their crop ears!
Hell now is wanting rogues,
Send there the canting dogges,
Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers!
God and our King for grace,
Leave now your wives’ embrace,
Up and avenge all their insults for years!
Ironsides! Who’s afear?
Pack ’em to Lucifer,
Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers!

The name “Kentish,” if introduced with such intention, would help in serving to recall in the stately mansions of the squires of Kent, and in many a humble yeoman’s home as well, why there were vacant places round the family board.

* * * * *

A brief comparison between Cromwell’s _Kentish_ and her lineal successor of our own day, His Majesty’s ship the _Kent_, may be of interest in conclusion.